Links: Level Up, Air Bender!

Coming soon from Dark Horse: an all-new Avatar: The Last Airbender comic written by Gene Luen Yang, author of American-Born Chinese and Level Up! Yang seems bullish about the project. “The pencils I’ve seen have been pure comics bliss,” he reports. “I giggled when I first saw them. Out loud. No joke. I sounded exactly like my four-year-old daughter when she gets an ice cream cone.” Look for The Promise on January 25, 2012.

Over at The Fandom Post, John Rose offers his first impressions of Gate 7, CLAMP’s long-awaited new series.

Beginning in January 2012, BOOM! Studios will be publishing a monthly Peanuts series featuring Charles Schulz’s iconic characters in brand-new adventures. Reaction among older fans was mixed, with some criticizing BOOM! for even considering such a project, and others viewing it in a more favorable light: as a gateway for young readers to discover Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and Lucy for themselves.

Here’s a book that Forbidden Planet blogger Wim would love to see translated into English: Zazie dans le Metro, by Clément Oubrerie, co-creator of the Aya books.

Reviews: Drew McCabe takes a look at the latest Pokemon manga, a Percy Jackson parody, and some other upcoming releases in his column From Friendly Ghosts to Gamma Rays at Comic Attack.

Katherine Dacey has been reviewing comics since 2006. From 2007 to 2008, she was the Senior Manga Editor at PopCultureShock, a site covering all aspects of the entertainment industry from comics to video games. In 2009, she launched The Manga Critic, where she focuses primarily on Japanese comics and novels in translation. Katherine lives and works in the Greater Boston area, and is a musicologist by training.

About Good Comics For Kids

We are a group of librarians, parents, and writers--and most of us wear at least two of those hats--who started writing about kids' comics in 2008 because, well, nobody else was. We like everything from Literary Graphic Novels to blatantly commercial (but fun!) licensed properties. And we don't lump all ages together; we're smart enough to know that a three-year-old has different abilities and interests than a 13-year-old.

Our goal is to cover kids' comics (for readers from birth to age 16) with both breadth and depth, through a mix of news, reviews, interviews, and previews, and to be both accessible to casual readers and interesting enough for serious fans.